ISLAMABAD: A day after it was signed into law, a lawmaker has decided to challenge the Protection of Pakistan Act 2014 in the Islamabad High Court (IHC).
Member National Assembly (MNA) Jamshed Dasti has prepared a petition against some sections of the law. This petition will be filed in the IHC on Monday, his counsel advocate Saeed Khurshid told Dawn. Earlier, after its promulgation, the law was challenged in the IHC and the Supreme Court in October last year.
Dasti had resigned from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on March 16, 2013 and also from the National Assembly. He later announced contesting election as an independent candidate in last year’s general election and defeated Hina Rabbani Khar.
In February this year, Dasti stunned his fellow parliamentarians when he said that liquor, worth millions of rupees, was supplied in the Parliament Lodges and that a pungent smell of hashish engulfed the area.
Also read: Protection of Pakistan Act signed into law
The lawmaker is now set to challenge the law in the IHC. “We will file the petition in the IHC on Monday and it is likely to be heard on Tuesday,” said advocate Khurshid.
In the petition, Dasti has challenged a number of provisions of the act which became a law on Friday.
President Mamnoon Hussain, after signing the much-awaited bill, forwarded it to the Prime Minister’s Office on Friday.
It may be mentioned that in addition to certain political parties and human rights organisations, the government-allied Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) had rejected the ordinance and the subsequent amendments, outright, saying that various clauses in it were against the fundamental rights of citizens as enshrined in the Constitution.
In the petition, Dasti has alleged that the law is contradictory to the articles 4 (rights of citizen), 9 (security of common man) and 10-A (fair trial).
Challenging section 3 of the law, which says that a police officer of BS-20 can order use of force to prevent use of schedule offence, the petition said it is feared the law may be used against the ruling party’s opponents.
It further says that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has an army of ‘Gullu Butts’ and submissive officers, who always obey their ‘illogical’ orders and at some occasions also used ‘fake encounter’ to get rid of ‘unwanted’ persons, therefore, the ruling party can misuse the law.
The petition says that subsection (i) of section 3 also empowers the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to take action against any person on receipt of “credible prior information”, but it does not specify how the dealing officials would assess the credibility of any information, as most of the police informants are not much different from ‘Gullu Butt’.
It says that the law also empowers the LEAs to arrest any suspect without warrants or also authorise them to search without permission and presence of a magistrate, which is against the fundamental rights of the citizen.
Criticising section 5 of the law, which the petition claims allows a public prosecutor to obtain remand of any suspect without production of the accused, it alleges that such practice is not common even in the proceedings related to war crimes.
It further says that according to section 15 of the law, the suspect would be “presumed to be engaged in war or insurrection against Pakistan, unless he establishes his non involvement in the offence” and puts the burden of proof on the accused person, adding that certain sections like transfer of case from one court of a district to the court of another district would make an under-custody suspect difficult to defend his case by engaging a lawyer.
The petition requests the court to set aside the sections of the law which are against the fundamental rights of the citizen.
Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2014